Donald Trump lashed out at Meryl Streep early on Monday, calling her a “Hillary flunky who lost big” after the actor criticized the President-elect during a speech at the Golden Globes on Sunday night.
The Doubt and Out of Africa star said that of all the performances she saw in 2016, the one that stuck with her most — and not in a good way — was not by an actor, but by Trump, referring to the moment he mocked a disabled reporter (something he later denied).
“It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life,” she said. “This instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform… filters down into everybody’s life. … Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose.”
Trump took to Twitter early on Monday to dismiss Streep, three-time Oscar winner and eight-time Golden Globe winner, as “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood.”
“[She] doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes,” he wrote. “She is a Hillary flunky who lost big.”
In a brief interview with the New York Times earlier, Trump said he had not seen Streep’s remarks but added that he was “not surprised” that he had come under attack from “liberal movie people.”
“I was never mocking anyone,” he said. “I was calling into question a reporter who had gotten nervous because he had changed his story. People keep saying I intended to mock the reporter’s disability, as if Meryl Streep and others could read my mind, and I did no such thing.”
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Write to Kate Samuelson at kate.samuelson@time.com